


Covered in the Colors

by Amberly



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: M/M, Second person POV, Soulmate AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-03
Updated: 2018-01-03
Packaged: 2019-02-27 19:06:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13254729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amberly/pseuds/Amberly
Summary: You're in the middle of your second poem when it happens. A familiar itch under your skin, and you won't look. You won't, voice hitching as you spill off of the page and into the audience, eyes scanning the crowd instead. Somewhere in the shadowed faces you can just see, with the lights in your eyes and the sudden rush of blood to the head, there is someone you’ve never met. Someone who cradles your paperweight heart in paint-stained fingers and rocks the frail anxiety huddled there into blissful sleep.





	Covered in the Colors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ClaraxBarton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/gifts).



> On my birthday in 2015, Clara tagged me in a soulmate prompt. "What if whatever you wrote on your skin appeared on your soulmates?" and we spent the whole rest of the day shooting around ideas and generally getting excited. It's taken two years for me to actually write the fic, and I could think of no better reason to finally get it written and finished than her Birthday. 
> 
> Happy Birthday Clara!! I hope that today is at least as relaxing as you hope, and hopefully much more relaxing than that. Things have been very rough for you, and you deserve a break--especially a break on your birthday! Thank you for your wonderful insights, your constant encouragement, and your very, very lovely snark. I'm so very, very glad that we're friends.

You're in the middle of your second poem when it happens. A familiar itch under your skin, and you won't look. You won't, voice hitching as you spill off of the page and into the audience, eyes scanning the crowd instead. Somewhere in the shadowed faces you can just see, with the lights in your eyes and the sudden rush of blood to the head, there is someone you’ve never met. Someone who cradles your paperweight heart in paint-stained fingers and rocks the frail anxiety huddled there into blissful sleep. Cheeks flushed and heart in your throat, you keep your eyes up until you can't. Until you have to look at the slim book in your hand for the next set of words, and there. It's right there, curving over the base of your thumb: no words, just the street address, brilliant blue and terrifying against the pale tremble of your hand. He's here.

A lifetime spent apart means there was no way he'd give you up. He was always going to track you down. You remember the pained grey of wilted flowers painted up your right arm, the writhing guilt of the pen as you scrawled Neruda apologies over your left, heartbeat like a tidal wave. Sometimes you thought you could feel him touching the words. Tracing the letters with fingers, you pictured calloused, strong. A Brooklyn opening night, a chance to compare the self-portraits you found on your palm with the man himself and you'd locked your door, ignored the constant ache under your ribs and finished a bottle of--something.

Four weeks of nothing. Four weeks was nothing. There had been gaps of months between the sudden blooms of color beneath your skin. A year, once, when the relentless insistence that you couldn't have a soulmate, that no one would love you, could never want you, won out over fate and you locked your skin behind hoodies, poems caught between your teeth. Endless paintings seeped over your skin, raising goosebumps and bitter tears as they were lost, unseen. You moved head-bowed through a world that didn't want you, and showered with the lights off until a bomb shattered Moscow and your panicked hands begged for something, anything. “You gave me hyacinths first a year ago” dipped out in shaky red, and there they blossomed, one after the other along your forearm. The late bloomer finally covered in someone else’s paint, heart finally given a home.

How does a man that tall manage to find a seat upfront? There is no answer to your question. There’s only that long body, folding itself into place just in front of you. Not close enough to touch, but you’re used to that. The gap between you has always been a stanza break, but tonight. Tonight, now, it’s less stanza and more line and you meet eyes like a Whitman poem as you turn the page. “I behold the picturesque giant and I love him.” And God it’s true. You are 16 and 27, aware of every inch of your skin: the freckles over your nose, the dimple in you cheeks. His face is drawn on your heart, a poem you can recite without looking, those green eyes a rich forest of something you can’t hold. Your voice is smoke from a flame as you finish. Bow your head to the applause. It’s steps now, minutes, your legs moving towards the edge of the stage, taking you away from him.

There’s still the signing. Endless people who want to talk to you, look at you and get your name in their books. Their books which they came here to buy, from you, and you still can’t believe it. Even as he comes through, lips curved in a small smile as he speaks his name--the first thing you don’t know about him. You know nothing and everything, signing your name and handing him a book full of poems he’s already read. How many of them aren’t about him? There’s one, you think, about loss. The mother you’ve never known and what her hair would’ve felt like, brushing your cheek while she cradled you. Another about the woman who took you in and hollowed you out, leaving you a vessel you thought nothing would ever fill. You finish. Stand. Make your way towards the back alone. Pass through the door and into the alley, where it’s cold and dark and smells of snow and gas.

“Duo.” Soft. Lilting. You are a trapped mouse and he is a lion, feline death on graceful legs as he makes his way towards you. He’s here. He’s here and he’s cupping your jaw, every inch of him just as on edge. There are callouses (you knew there were callouses) and he’s warm and his lips when they brush yours are soft. You’ve read the Song of Songs before, but you’ve never understood it until now, rising on tiptoe and sliding your hands into short hair to devour. It leaves you dizzy and drunk as your mouths part. He is yours and you are his and he says nothing else as he takes your hand. Later. You can talk later. But now--now there are years of want, a hunger that’s lasted a decade, and you let him lead you wherever he wants. You will walk through the valley of the shadow of death and fear nothing, for his fingers are your fingers and he is a warm weight against your side.

The studio is quiet. There’s a bed, shoved into one side. A couch and a kitchen, and a giant dropcloth, right in the middle. The stars are barely visible but the moon is there, spilling light over his paint-flecked workspace and you have never wanted to be canvas more, his hands in your sweater, mapping your skin like a city. Drawing lines from hip to rib to sternum, lips fierce against yours as he shuts the door with his foot. Yours. Yours. It’s unfamiliar, too big for your tongue as your sweater hits the floor, your jeans. It’s cold, but that’s not why you shiver. Not what makes you shake as your knees buckle, neck arched in offering to a someone who could never hold a knife to it. Your bones sing, safe in the steady weight of his hand pressing gently, so gentle.

You go down with him on the cloth and brush your thumb over his nipple, swallowing his hiss like an offer of wine. And then there’s everything and nothing, slick pressure and the steady drag of his mouth as you moan and arch. Your toes curl, thigh taut, all of you bleached white in moonlight and all marble muscle. It’s a slow burn, the weight of his hands on your hips dragging you down and filling you up.  Friction. You are a lit match in the darkness as he strikes just _there._ It’s fireworks and an inferno, bursts of bliss burning you in perfect alliteration. He catches, lights with you, after you. Gathers up your smoldering ashes to hold and brushes back your kindling hair to press praying lips to your temple. The curve of your neck. Breathless and boneless you can only cling to him, eye to eye without an ocean between you.

“Trowa.”


End file.
